Thursday's Notes

The 7th Military History Carnival is up at Osprey Publishing Blog; and Asian History Carnival #18 is up at Frog in a Well/China! Carnivalesque XXXIV, an early modern edition of the festival, goes up at Cardinal Wolsey's Today in History on Saturday 16 December. Send nominations of the best in early modern history blogging since 28 October to alunadler*at*yahoo*dot*co* dot*uk or carnivalesque*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk or use the form.

In"Readings on Pakistan," Chapati Mystery, 11 December, our colleague, Manan Ahmed, notes that there is no adequate book on Pakistani history. Rather, he offers a bibliography of articles and, to publishers, a chance to offer him a book contract.

Hamilton's Hostelries," Economist, 22 November, and Dominique Browning,"Gimme Shelter," NYT, 2 December, review A. K. Sandoval-Strausz's Hotel: An American History. You can read the book's introduction here. Sandoval-Strausz,"How America Invented the Hotel: A history of hospitality," Slate, 21 November, is a slide-show essay. Hat tip.

Tyler Cowan, Matt Yglesias, and David Noon discuss Melinda Miller's paper,"The Righteous and Reasonable Ambition to Become a Landholder: What Would have Happened if Former Slaves had Received Land after the Civil War?" She does some fascinating work on what happened to the former slaves of Oklahoma's Cherokee Nation, which was forced to make land available to its freedmen. This is another example of Eric Rauchway's point about the contemporary vitality of economic history, but that it is being done in economics departments. Notice, btw, that Miller is a job candidate this year. Michigan's economics department apparently encourages its young doctors to post an exemplary piece of work on the net. Check out the web address for her paper. Good idea.